1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a device for treating various kinds of heart diseases, and more particularly to an active hydraulic ventricular attaching support system for treating heart failure or various kinds of cardiomyopathies.
2. Description of Related Arts
Heart failure is a common pathologic and physiologic state of most heart diseases which have developed to the end stage, and is also a clinical syndrome of ventricular filling or impaired ejection ability which is caused by the chaos of heart structure and function. Its basic characters are dyspnea and fatigue, limited sporting toleration, and can also be body fluid overload or even pulmonary congestion and surrounding dropsy.
The basic and clinical researches about cardiomyopathies, especially preventing, diagnosing and treating of heart failure have achieved some progress in recent years. However, about 50% of the patients of heart failure die in three years. The heart transplantation is an effective way to treat the end-staged heart failure, but can not be applied widely due to the lacking of donator, and restriction of social, economic and technical factors. Many substituting methods are raised up with respect to the problem.
Cardiac support device (CSD), is a treating harness developed by Acorn Cardiovascular, inc. in 1998, based on the treating concept of passive ventricular constraint (PVC). And its relative patents are: Cardiac harness, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,485,089, 7,097,613, 7,022,063; Expandable cardiac harness for treating congestive heart failure, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,097,611,7,081,086, 7,077,802; Cardiac harness for treating congestive heart failure and for defibrillating and/or pacing/sensing, U.S. Pat. No. 7,164,952. The CSD attaches to the epicardium surface tightly and evenly. The methods of transplanting the CSD are disclosed by the following references:
(1) An example of treating expansionary cardiomyopathy with CSD, Chinese Journal of General Surgery, 2004, 42(24):1508;
(2) Clinical observation to effect of CSD in treating expansionary cardiomyopathy, Chinese Journal of Medicine, 2003, 2(8):51-52;
(3) Application of CSD in treating congestive heart failure, Foreign medicine: angiocardiopathy fascicule, 2004, 31(3):139-141;
(4) Reverse remodeling of the failing ventricle: surgical intervention with the Acorn Cardiac Support Device, Congest heart Fail, 2004 March-April, 10(2):96-104, discussion 105;
(5) Global surgical experience with the Acorn cardiac support device. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg, 2003 October, 126(4):983-91.
The conventional clinical experiments show that, transplanting the CSD for long term helps the left atrium to recover to a normal state, and further makes the shape of heart recover to a normal state. Therefore, CSD is considered as means of good application prospect in treating heart failure.
However, the CSD takes effect by passively physical shaping, and thus has great passivity in application. It can not perform active and positive clinical intervention, especially direct medicine intervention, and can not be combined with modern medicine treatment of various species and good effect. Therefore, its clinical treating effect and treating meaning is discounted and needs to be improved. In general, two main drawbacks should be improved as follows:
(1) passivity of treatment: its treating effect is obtained by passive constriction function without other controlling mechanism, and it can not be intervened in procedure effectively after being transplanted into the body; and
(2) uniqueness of treatment: it functions only by physical constriction feature of the fiber net, and can not be combined with other effective treating means such as medicine treatment and synthetical treatment.